Worry and social desirability: Opposite relationships for socio-political and social-evaluation worries

The present article investigates the relationship between social desirability and worry. In particular, it addresses the question of whether socio-political worries (i.e. worries about societal or environmental problems) show a different relationship with social desirability than worries related to one's social-evaluative self-concept (i.e. worries about one's own relationships, future, work, or finances). A sample of 155 students responded to self-report questionnaires on worry and social desirability, first under standard instructions and then under social desirability-provoking instructions (imaginary job-application instructions). As expected, results showed opposite relationships for socio-political and social-evaluation worries. First, socio-political worries showed positive correlations with scores from the social desirability questionnaire, whereas social-evaluation worries showed negative correlations. Second, endorsements of socio-political worries increased under social desirability-provoking instructions, whereas those of social-evaluation worries decreased. However, all correlations between self-reported worry and social-desirability scores were rather small. Moreover, in absolute terms, socio-political worries did not show any greater social-desirability bias than social-evaluation worries. Implications for self-report measures of socio-political worries (e.g. environmental worry, worry about technological risks) and directions for future research are discussed

Optical phase cloaking of 700-nm light waves in the far field by a three-dimensional carpet cloak

Transformation optics is a design tool that connects geometry of space and propagation of light. Invisibility cloaking is a corresponding benchmark example. Recent experiments at optical frequencies have demonstrated cloaking for the light amplitude ("ray cloaking"). In this Letter, we demonstrate far-field cloaking of the light phase ("wave cloaking") by interferometric microscope-imaging experiments on the previously introduced three-dimensional carpet cloak at 700-nm wavelength and for arbitrary polarization of light

Persistence of coherent quantum dynamics at strong dissipation

The quantum dynamics of a two state system coupled to a bosonic reservoir with sub-Ohmic spectral density is investigated for strong friction. Numerically exact path integral Monte Carlo methods reveal that in contrast to conventional expectations, coherent dynamics never turns into incoherent decay for a broad class of spectral distributions. Coherences associated with substantial system-reservoir entanglement exist in non-equilibrium even when strong dissipation makes the thermodynamic state of the system to behave essentially classical. This may be of relevance for current experiments with nanoscale devices and bio-molecular aggregates.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Detection of inflammation- and neoplasia-associated alterations in human large intestine using plant/invertebrate lectins, galectin-1 and neoglycoproteins

Commonly, plant and invertebrate lectins are accepted glycohistochemical tools for the analysis of normal and altered structures of glycans in histology and pathology. Mammalian lectins and neoglycoproteins are recent additions to this panel for the detection of lectin-reactive carbohydrate epitopes and glycoligand-binding sites. The binding profiles of these three types of probes were comparatively analyzed in normal, inflamed and neoplastic large intestine. In normal colonic mucosa the intracellular distribution of glycoconjugates and carbohydrate ligand-binding sites in enterocytes reveals a differential binding of lectins with different specificity and of neoglycoproteins to the Golgi apparatus, the rough and smooth endoplasmic reticulum and the apical cell surface. The accessible glycoligand-binding sites and the lectin-reactive carbohydrate epitopes detected by galectin-1 show the same pattern of intracellular location excluding the apical cell surface. Lectin-reactive carbohydrate epitopes detected by plant lectins of identical monosaccharide specificity as the endogenous lectin {[}Ricinus communis agglutinin-I (RCA-I), Viscum album agglutinin (VAA)], however, clearly differ with respect to their intracellular distribution. Maturation-associated differences and heterogeneity in glycohistochemical properties of epithelial cells and non-epithelial cells (macrophages, dendritic cells, lymphocytes) are found. Dissimilarities in the fine structural Ligand recognition of lectins with nominal specificity to the same monosaccharide have been demonstrated for the galactoside-specific lectins RCA-I, VAA and galectin-1 as well as the N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc)-specific lectins Dolichos biflorus agglutinin (DBA), soybean agglutinin (SBA) and Helix pomatia agglutinin in normal mucosa and in acute appendicitis. Acute inflammation of the intestinal mucosa found in acute phlegmonous appendicitis is associated with selective changes of glycosylation of mucin in goblet cells mainly of lower and middle crypt segments resulting in an increase of DBA- and SEA-binding sites in the goblet cell population. Appendicitis causes no detectable alteration of neoglycoprotein binding. In contrast, tumorigenesis of colonic adenoma is characterized by increases in lectin-reactive galactose (Gal; Gal-beta 1,3-GalNAc), fucose and N-acetylglucosamine moieties and by enhanced presentation of respective carbohydrate ligand-binding capacity. This work reveals that endogenous lectins and neoglycoproteins are valuable glycohistochemical tools supplementing the well-known analytic capacities of plant lectins in the fields of gastrointestinal anatomy and gastroenteropathology

Effects of fluctuations on the initial eccentricity from the Color Glass Condensate in heavy ion collisions

We introduce a modified form of the Kharzeev-Levin-Nardi (KLN) approach for nuclear collisions. The new ansatz for the unintegrated gluon distribution function preserves factorization, and the saturation scale is bound from below by that for a single nucleon. It also reproduces the correct scaling with the number of collisions at high transverse momentum. The corresponding Monte Carlo implementation allows us to account for fluctuations of the hard sources (nucleons) in the transverse plane. We compute various definitions of the eccentricity within the new approach, which are relevant for the interpretation of the elliptic flow. Our approach predicts breaking of the scaling of the eccentricity with the Glauber eccentricity at the level of about 30%.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, Updated version as accepted by Phys.Rev.

On the rank of semimodules over semirings

In this paper we investigate conditions on a semiring $S$ such that there are semimodules over $S$ with bases of different length. This includes and generalizes corresponding results on rings, in particular one due to P. Dubreil

On a theory of neutrino oscillations with entanglement

We show that, despite appearances, a theoretical approach to neutrino oscillation in which the neutrino and its interaction partners are entangled yields the standard result for the neutrino oscillation wavelength. We also shed some light on the question of why plane-wave approaches to the neutrino oscillation problem can yield the correct oscillation wavelength even though they do not explicitly account for the localization of the neutrino source and the detector.Comment: RevTeX 4, 12 pages, 1 figure; v2: Minor clarifications, references adde